Oh, I so love this claim. Just Google “Mavis Leno” or “Ms. Foundation” and “Afghanistan,” hm? Both were working for Afghan women years and years before any of the wingnuts discovered the value of using Afghan women to shame American feminists by pretending they had discovered Afghan women first.

Can I just say? I remember reading about the Ms. Foundation’s work in Afghanistan against the Taliban when I was in law school, over 10 years ago. And having an argument with my Pakistani-born co-worker about whether the Taliban was a cultural expression that should be protected from outside scrutiny in 1998 (he eventually came around, given that his mother had been an M.D. trained in London who would have been able to practice in Lahore had the family not fled a coup, but who wouldn’t have been allowed to work under the Taliban (and her patients would have died since male physicians were prohibited from touching unrelated women)).

Hey, here’s a thought, conservatives: start worrying about violence against women in your own backyard before you start trying to catch feminists out on issues they’re way ahead of you on.

Um, yeah, while Christina Hoff Sommers was busy inventing the war on boys, or whatever her deal was around 2003, I was at a hearing on Capitol Hill where the future of military presence in Afghanistan with a bunch of other feminist interns wearing a sticker that said, “Afghanistan: Where’s the Marshall Plan?” (since signs aren’t allowed)

I don’t mean to berate my elders, but c’mon Christina, I was a freaking 20 year old intern and I knew this stuff. GET WITH IT.

While I don’t wish to defend conservative what-about-ery, I do think that there is a legitimate point to be made regarding biases in Western feminism.

A lot of “mainstream” feminist organisations campaign primarily on issues that affect straight white middle-class non-disabled citizens of [insert name of wealthy Western country here]. We don’t here nearly as many mentions of women in Afghanistan in the mainstream Western media as we do of, say abortion rights in Western countries.

So yes, by all means call conservatives on their hypocrisy. But it’s a bit hard to see American feminists as champions of women in Afghanistan. Because what most American feminists do for women in Afghanistan is basically zero compared for what most American feminists do for, say, middle-class Americans.

Sorry, when I said “mainstream Western media” I mean feminist mainstream Western media. As in media from mainstream feminist groups

I am on mailing lists for a number of feminist organisation, and the “mainstream” groups tend, for example, to send out a lot more stuff on reproductive rights than, say, access to sanitary products for women in Zimbabwe. Or FGM. Or women on welfare in the US. Or very much about any issue that concerns non-Western women or non-middle-class women more than it does Western middle class women.

So I’m not basing my observation on the media, I’m basing it on my experience of mainstream feminist groups’ own mailings and activities.

Bluestockings and Mnemosyne: I appreciate the carricature, but I don’t see how much original comment provoked your responses, I’m afraid. I’m not supporting the conservative strawfeminist argument, but I do think that there is a valid point to be made about the bias of mainstream feminism in wealthy Western countries.

–IP

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